As business expands and my stuff ends up in more and more places, particularly on the web, I have begun to realize I need to imprint not just metadata into my prints but also put an actual copyright notice onto my shots.

I know the photoshop method but have noticed so many ultra spiffy signatures on so many of the posts here I thought I'd ask if anyone might reccomend a piece of software for batch processing this task?

Photo Shop CS.. You just have to make the logo and then record an action to place it on your image. Then you can batch process to all the files in a folder. Now if you want a signature you will need to make a logo with one of those tablets so you can draw your signature .

The posting of a copyright notice on the image is good, especially as a way for people to know who took the shot as it moves around the web, but it is not legally necessary to enforce your copyright (which occurs at the moment you take the shot). What's more important, and critical to make any legal claims against an infringer, is regisering your images with the copyright office. Are you doing that in a consistent and timely fashion?